The 1st Annual Game of My Year Awards!

     The Game of My Year Awards are a list of every game that Robotic Attack Squadron has reviewed in the current year in order of greatness. These games didn't all come out this year. Some of them I didn't even necessarily play this year as I wrote some of the reviews before I started this site. But all these games had reviews published in 2013. Amazingly, that's 31 games. One of those games got a perfect score, and four were really close. None got the lowest possible score, and only one was in the lowest tier. I really hope I run into another perfect score in 2014! I'm putting them in order off the cuff, not taking into consideration their scores. I might end up putting something ahead of something with a higher score if I feel like it while writing this. Also, this order can change minute to minute. It's hard to say which I really like better, although number 1 is a definitively my number 1. Here they are in descending order (best first!):

1. Closure – I've already written a lot about Closure and I don't want to repeat myself too much. It's amazing story is told almost exclusively through its mood, which is set by its music and visuals, and a ton of half glimpsed images that flash briefly in the background as you solve its pretty brilliant light manipulation puzzles. The creepiest game I've ever played and one with some of the most memorable and shocking story elements, Closure is a basically perfect game and one I recommend to anyone who can handle its level of creepiness and heavy mood.

2. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron – This game is going to show you all kinds of beautiful, surreal stuff. A lot of game's promise that, but El Shaddai delivers. It also delivers an intricate, fun combat system with terrific animations and a really great Biblically inspired story with tremendous presentation. I'm really hoping for a sequel, and with the creator buying the rights to the property, that's certainly a possibility.

3. Where is My Heart? - This game has a crazy concept and executes it perfectly. It's main idea is one you think you can wrap your head around, but you never can. Your confusion is part of the theme, as are the amazing pixel graphics and sound design.

4. The Walking Dead – This game suffers from a crazy amount of techinical problems, but its interactive story-telling is terrific. Prepare yourself to feel feels and make hard choices.

5. Bit.Trip Presents... Runner 2:Future Legend of Rhythm Alien – This musical running experience is pretty sublime. It demands perfection but is not at all punitive. It's super addictive and sounds and looks beautiful. It's also funny and subtly inspiring.

6. Spec Ops: The Line – This game tells the story of the anatomy of a tragedy that comes together with the player character right in the middle of the storm of violence. Designed to mess with you and make you think about real things, Spec Ops also features fun and frantic gunplay, which helps hammer home its points and themes even more.

7. Anomaly: Warzone Earth – “Revese tower defense” or “tower offense” are both perfect descriptions of this genre flipping game that has your units set out on a set path to fight stationary towers. There is a ton of variety in this game. It just never seems to get old; you always discover some new set-up or tactic. On paper it sounds like it plays itself, but actually requires near constant attention to play well. It looks great too.

8. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den DLC – I like Bioshock 2's story a lot, but Minerva's Den's story is better. It's up there with the original Bioshock's brain bending tale. The gameplay, as usual, is brilliant but not difficult enough for veteran players.

9. Alien Zombie Death – AZD is short but sublime. Every bit of it is full of white-knuckle action. Each level is a close-call factory that pushes you to the edge without feeling frustratingly hard. The art and character design is great, and the tiny bit of theme and story go a long way in sparking your imagination.

10. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath – Despite being a 1^st person shooter/ 3^rd person action game, this title is instantly recognizable as an Oddworld property in its themes and design. The different take on 1^st person action is pretty solid, and like all Oddworld games, the character and world design is top notch.

11. Wipeout HD Fury DLC – More like a sequel than a DLC pack, Fury is full of content. The new race types are fun, especially detonator and eliminator. As usual, the audio-visual experience is near peer-less.

12. BreakQuest – BreakQuest embraces the chaos of the breakout genre by throwing you into a new and different set-up in every level and bombarding you with tons of power-ups, both positive and negative. Lots of fun. When I finished, I wanted to go for another 100 levels. Guess I need to try the sequel...

13. Velocity – The teleporting game-play that takes center stage in this game is unique and really fun. Lots of little touches, secrets, and extras polish things up too.

14. The Unfinished Swan – This game is short and sweet. It's basically a game about having you do new things. I just wish it was a bit longer and that the story was a little more coherent.

15. Mirror's Edge Pure Time Trials DLC – These maps are beautiful and fun. Just don't expect me to work on those uber-hard trophies. I had enough trouble with the platinum.

16. Outland – Outland is very solid. The controls are silky smooth. Still, there was something just a little off with it. Just a little mind you. I think it's that it wasn't hard enough. It should have had hard mode. I'm starting to play arcade mode now though, and that just might be hard enough, we'll see.

17. Quantum Conundrum – This game is very fun to figure out your first time through. I wish there was something worth doing in the post game though (besides finding the noise makers). Also, the story goes nowhere.

18. Costume Quest – This game is cute and fun and funny. It could use a little more difficulty and options in the battle system though.

19. Enigmo – Enigmo could have been really great if it layered on a few more mechanics in its late game. Still, it's really fun. I highly recommend going back and experimenting a bit for fun once you have beaten the game and really understand how to use the different pieces, as you can set up some really crazy stuff (that does nothing).

20. Canabalt – Canabalt is a really cool game. I played it quite a bit for a few weeks, but with no goals other than a higher score, I couldn't really stick with it beyond that. That's just the way I play games. I know that part of it's point is to be simple and have no goal other than a high score, and I respect that a lot, but the goals and levels are what made me enjoy Runner 2 so much more than this. It is a great game though.

21. Wizorb – Wizorb is fun and looks awesome, but the way it handles its breakout scenarios leads to a lot of frustration. Really, despite the new mechanics piled on top, it's just too traditional of a breakout clone. It needed every level to be more like the boss fights.

22. Rainbow Moon – Rainbow Moon is really long (at least on hard mode). It's battle and leveling systems are fun while you are playing, but with barely any good story parts to gel things together, it's ultimately pretty forgettable.

23. Jelly Pops – This game is short and fun, with a few frustrations along the way.

24. Galcon Labs – The core cocept of this game is fun and cool, it just feels unfinished.

25. Earthworm Jim HD – If you're a fan of EWJ and/or HD sprites, gives this a quick run-through. I did, and it was fun. I had played too much as a kid to get into playing this for any length of time, especially enough time to work on its super-hardcore trophies.

26. Hoard – Hoard is an awesome multi-player game. Too bad I played it almost exclusively single-player. Playing against the AI is fun to an extent, but not an extent with too much longevity. If you can play with others, ignore these comments. If it's just you, you may want to skip it. The hour or two I played multi-player was pretty brilliant though...

27. Patapon – This game is fun and unique, but is missing something. It needed better music and a different progress mechanic. Leveling is added in the 2^nd game, but I'm not sure if I'll ever give that a whirl or not.

28. Tomb Raider – After playing this game, it's hard to believe how universally loved it is. It was fun, but it is not the top-tier game I hear so many people claim it is. I played it because I heard the story is amazing, but the story was really bad.

29. Alien Zombie Mega Death – It's odd how low on the list this game is considering how high the first game is on the list, and that this game is loads more of similar content. Some of the magic was gone in this version in the gameplay and art design departments.

30. Dracula: Undead Awakening – This twin stick shooter is fun and cool, but gets repetitive after awhile. The unlockable portraits aren't enough to keep you coming back. And the lack of actual 2-stick control makes it physically painful to play at times

31. Piyotama – This puzzle game is fun for a few rounds, but then I was done with it. It's chaotic in a way that makes it feel like it's playing itself. It's the only game to get a rating in the “Bad Games” tier this year. Hopefully there won't be any more in 2014 and beyond!

     I hope you enjoyed the year 2013! Thanks for reading, and we'll see you in 2014 with some new reviews and articles! I'm currently playing Bangai-O Spirits, Retro/Grade, Everyday Shooter, and Plants vs. Zombies, so look for a review of one of them soon!

The Walking Dead ***SPOILER POST*****

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!! DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Real quick, here are my stats:

Lied to Hershel

Saved Duck

Sided with Kenny against Larry about Duck being bitten

Didn't give the bitten lady the gun

Saved Doug

Chopped off that dude's leg

Listened to the crazy lady in the woods

Tried to revive Larry

Killed the first St. John brother, not the second

Stole the food from the car

Didn't shoot the girl who was being attacked

Brought Lily with us

Talked Kenny down

Shot Duck

Helped Omid instead of Khrysta

Killed the emaciated Zombie boy

Didn't lie to Vernon

Left Clementine at the house when going to Crawford

Saved Ben

Hid the bite

Ben, Omid, and Khrysta came with me to look for Clementine

Kept Lee's arm

Argued Kenny down

Kept my cleaver hidden during the stranger scene

Clementine killed the stranger

Made Clementine leave without killing Lee

     Quick thoughts. In this world, it doesn't matter that Lee is a murderer. All that matters is what he does now. You can instantly form a super-strong bond with someone (like Clementine) or instantly be enemies with someone (like Larry) in dire situations like this. All relationships like that are heightened. Killing Duck was the hardest part. Burying the zombie boy really made you feel the weight of what happened to Duck. You do a long list of questionable stuff. Stealing food from the car is the one that comes back to haunt you in the end. Some peoples' deaths are meaningless, they just happen with no great purpose. Like Ben, who in my game tried to do the right thing over and over but failed, and then died on his way to try again. Once Lee got bit, I instantly knew what the end would be, I just had to get there. This is exactly what Lee was thinking too, so at that moment, you are totally in his head. Amazing.

PS: In the review I talk about a conversation that the game didn't save. I told Clementine in the store that I had killed someone before the zombie infestation. Later, she didn't know that, and told me I could have told her. Stupid no auto-saving.

The Walking Dead Review (PS3)

     I've read 2 issues of The Walking Dead Comic book (one excellent, one meh), and seen one episode of the TV show (which was so so). I had heard nothing but praise for the game though, so I picked it up. It's an adventure game, but it only bears a passing resemblance to the adventure games I have tried in my life, like Myst and... that's about it.

     It's hard for me to review a game like this as I am very cautious about spoiler's and literally everything that happens in the game is story driven and therefore apt to be spoiled. So this might seem like a poorly written review, and for that I apologize (of course there is also poor writing involved too). I just do it because I love you and I don't want to spoil you. Smiley face. I also recommend not reading the trophies before playing the game, as some of their names are spoilers. Also, I'd recommend turning trophy notifications off while you play this game, as you get them all automatically and they are therefore pointless interruptions (although I love trophies in general!).

     The game is a story driven adventure that is all about how you act and speak in certain situations. Scenarios culminate in mucky moral dilemmas where you are forced to make a choice with drastic consequences. The game tracks what you say and do between episodes (the game was originally released as five separate episodes that came out 1 at a time).

     You control Lee Everett, a man who suddenly winds up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that's just starting to happen. He finds himself taking care of an 8 year old girl, Clementine, whose parents were out of town when bad things started happening. They meet randomly and end up sticking together, trying to survive. I'm just giving you the very basics here. The story is top notch, I don't want you to know almost any of it when you go in. You'll learn a lot more than what I'm telling you here in just the first few minutes of the game, but I'm keeping it super spoiler free!

     Each of the five episodes takes, by my estimate, 2-3 hours to play. You're going to meet a lot of characters and be put in a whole lot of different situations. In many situations, you walk Lee around a set environment with the left analog stick while the right controls a cursor that works like a mouse. The cursor has four spaces around it, which correspond to the layout of cross, circle, triangle, and square. When you put the cursor on an object or person you can interact with, your available methods of interaction pop up as pictograms in these four slots, and pressing the corresponding button does that action. It might be a hand to pick something up, a word bubble to initiate a conversation, a hammer icon to bash a zombie's skull in, or a gun icon to shoot. Objects and people you can interact with have a white dot on them that appears when your cursor gets near them. This system works well for the times when you are left alone to walk around and do stuff freely, or when you are under the gun to try and do stuff during an intense situation. Sometimes you are deliberately searching for items or a way to do something with the items you have and sometimes you are acting on the spur of the moment, but this control scheme handles either pretty well. This is certainly a slower-paced experience than you might expect for a zombie game, but it works great. 

     Combat in the game is handled in a few different ways. Sometimes you may just click on a zombie to attack it. Other times you may need to actually aim a weapon and fire. Sometimes you have to mash cross and then press a button corresponding to an on-screen prompt to finish it off. Sometimes you need to click on a zombie as it is thrashing around and holding you to kick it off. These situations are some of the few moments where you can actually die and get a game over. Most of them work pretty well; some are frustrating because clicking on a moving zombie is a little awkard.

     Often you are in interactive cutscenes where the group you are with is interacting and doing stuff. In these situations you control what Lee says. You are given four options most of the time (well, three and the option to stay silent by pressing square). A timer bar appears at the bottom of the screen to count down how long you have to answer before you automatically say nothing and the scene goes on. Just hearing about this may sound boring or pointless, but choosing what to say is one of the most engaging parts of the game. What do you say to people you meet for the first time when you don't know if you can trust them? What do you say to people you know you can't trust, or who hate you, or who you are trying to keep secrets from? Or when you are asked to take sides? What you say and do defines how the game goes on, and trying to pick between the three options in intense situations with only a few seconds to make your decision is nerve wracking. The stakes are always life and death and your choices seal the fates of yourself and the people around you, so chooses wisely.. Just like real life, you'll wonder if you did the right thing or what would happen if you had done things differently.

     It can't be overemphasized how good the story is. What happens in the game will be defined by the choices made by each individual player. If you don't like it at first, give it a little time. The investment will be well worth it. The characters and story are in the top echelons of game story-telling. Only a small handful of games, like the Metal Gear Solid series, have great writing like this (and just so you know, the game is nothing like MGS in writing style. I'm just saying they both have great writing). And the fact that all the conversations are interactive and change based on what you say and do makes it even more amazing. At the end of each chapter, a summary shows you what percentage of players made the same choices that you did. This is a fascinating end to each chapter. If you know someone else who has played the game, talk to them about your choices. I had several interesting talks with another player about how he played the game and what differences there were in our stories. I didn't have a desire to re-play the game and make different choices. I felt very strongly that I made my choices and I wanted to stick with them, and that playing around would cheapen the experience. But discussing your choices and what happened with other players is really fun. I'm being super vague about the details because even talking about themes and ideas presented in the game can be a spoiler in a game like this (they were for me!). Going in cold is your best bet. I don't think you'll be disappointed. 

     The graphics are designed to look like a hand-drawn comic book. The game is in color, in case you were wondering (the comic is in black and white). This style works pretty well. It's definitely not the best looking game, but it works. There are a few ugly character models, namely Larry and Omid. I think they look like they were ripped out of a PSOne game.

     The sound effects are appropriate and when there is music it's good.

     Unfortunately this game has a laundry list of technical problems. Animations stutter. Lips get out of sync. Music gets stuck and loops. The game froze on me once (at a particularly epic moment). Character models sometimes pop into existence or move around when they shouldn't. Background items move around (I mean, like, trees and stuff are moving around in the background. The whole tree). Sometimes in the middle of intense moments you will click to do something and the game will freeze for about 2-5 seconds before doing what you said. This happens a handful of times right in the middle of intense action sequences. Worst of all, in my opinion, is the auto-saving. I had to re-play some segments after quitting to the main menu a few times, which is a total mood killer. One time, while re-playing a part I had already played, I noticed the game auto-save several times, so I don't get why it hadn't saved that part before for me. The absolute worst was an important conversation I had early in the game. Later in the game the characters acted as if this conversation never happened. My theory is that I had this conversation and then had to quit. The game wasn't saved. When I re-loaded I didn't re-do the conversation because I was in the same spot and it seemed like it was saved. So the auto-saving isn't consistent and the game doesn't save when you quit (to be fair, it does tell you this. But why doesn't it just save?). This conversation was very important to me, and when it came up later in the game that I didn't have it, I was mad.

     But the long list of flaws can't drag down the experience; The Walking Dead is one the best games I've ever played. The story is affecting and superb, and you really feel like you are crafting it, living it though your character's thoughts, words, and deeds. It will make you feel many emotions and debate with yourself what you would do in a similar situation. If it ran perfectly, I'd definitely give it a perfect score. Maybe even if we could eliminate half of the flaws I mentioned above. Together, that long list of problems do hurt the experience, but just barely. Everything else is just too good for the flaws to bring you down too much. It's a great game, Tier 2.

Engimo Review

    Enigmo is the last game in the Beatshapers bundle I got on PSN that also contained Wizorb, BreakQuest, Canabalt, and Galcon Labs. Not a bad bundle for $7 or however much it was.

     Enigmo is a puzzle game of sorts where water drops from an inverted tank in one part of a 2d level and you must guide it into a receptacle at another part of the level by placing objects that manipulate the water droplets. Some pieces bounce or launch the droplets at high speed. Others let the liquid slide along or deflect it like a piece of steel. One piece acts like a sponge that soaks up the liquid until it drips out of the bottom. After a few stages, you start to have to manage lava and/or oil in addition to the water. The difference between these liquids is mostly cosmetic. All of the liquids (1, 2, or all of them can be in any given stage) must end up with 40 drops in their respective receptacles for the stage to end. The flows into these receptacles have to be continuous, as liquid quickly evaporates out of the receptacles if the flow doesn't continue. This stops you from using the same pieces to divert different liquids. You can't just put 40 drops of water in its spot and then use all those same pieces on the lava. You need to ration your limited parts.

     When a stage begins, you can survey the level by moving the analog stick around before pressing cross to start the stage. Once you start, the water starts flowing, and a bonus gauge in the corner starts counting backward from a high number. If you can beat the stage before that number runs out, you will get that score, plus a bonus for any parts you didn't use. This gives an incentive to move fast and be efficient, but there is no penalty for not doing so other than receiving a score of 0 for the stage. I also got some random score bonuses at some stages, not sure why. Along the left side of the stage is a bank of all the parts available to you for the level. There are eight different types, and you get a different mix in every level. Bizarrely, the game doesn't tell you how many of each part you get. You often have multiple copies of certain parts in a level, but you don't know that until you use a part and then see that it is still available in your bank.

     You cycle through the parts in the bank and parts that you have already placed on the level with the d-pad. This is a little frustrating as it seems to jump around randomly a bit from the objects in the level to the bank. Often you will want to place an object from the bank way over on the right side of the screen. To do so, you'll need to scroll all the way through all the objects you've already placed to your left to get to the bank. Then you must drag the object all the way back to the right side of the screen. There has to be a better way to do this. When you have selected the object you want to place or move, pressing cross puts you in edit mode (as opposed to view mode, where you can look around but aren't moving any objects). While in edit mode you move the object you have selected with the left analog stick. You can move it very slowly with the d-pad for fine adjustments. You rotate it left or right with L1 and R1, respectively. You can change how finely you rotate an item be holding triangle to make rotation slower and square to make it faster. I had to do this a few times to get things just the way I wanted them. By default, it is set to rotate at the fastest setting. Pressing cross again places the object and switches you back to view mode. Seeing how objects will work when placed is a snap since liquid dynamically interacts with objects as you move them around and place them. This is very slick.

     Solutions to these levels often involve placing bouncer parts that send streams of liquid flying around at high speeds. You typically need to set a few of these at the correct angles to get the liquid where it needs to go. There is also a cool part that shoots water droplets out like a cannon, although you must set the liquid up to fly into it at the right angle for it to work properly. In levels that include oil or lava, you always start with just the water dripping. You must make the water continuously hit switches to make the oil and lava start and keep dripping. There are also force fields in many levels that need to be deactivated by making a liquid go through a color coded hoop. There are also a few types of surfaces that make up the level itself that you need to work with. Some reflect liquid, letting it bounce or slide along the surface. One type absorbs it, making your stream disappear. All these elements mixed together in different ways make each level an interesting experience. They don't exactly feel unique though. Each one has you chart a convoluted path for each liquid you are dealing with until you finally have everything in place. There are 50 stages, and they all feel somewhat same-ish, with a few exceptions. In general, you use the same techniques and overcome the same obstacles in each. It would be great if a few more concepts were introduced throughout the game.              Even the difficulty doesn't go up all that much. Once you get about half-way through the game, each level is about the same difficulty: 1 to 5 minutes of mild brain teasing. None of the stages are very hard, and, disappointingly, the last stage is quite easy. Most of the stages aren't easy either, fortunately, but none of them will boggle your brain the way you might expect later levels in a game like this to. Super hard stages in puzzle games like this can be frustrating, but very rewarding. Both that frustration and that rewarding feeling are mostly missing from this game.

     The game does pull off the feeling that you are putting together a unique solution or even breaking the rules. And you probably are in many case. I believe there are multiple solutions to many of the puzzles, and because it is physics based, weird things can happen that aren't going to happen to everyone. It's often the sign of a great puzzle game when you feel like you're cheating to get things done, and I had that feeling a few times during Enigmo as the physics guided the liquid into strange paths and situations.

     The graphics are really great. They are simple shapes and blocks, but they are all rendered in 3d. They easily could have been 2d objects, but as the camera pans around, you can see they have depth. They even look great on an HD tv, with the exception of a few of the menus. Even the big background textures look good on an HD tv despite this being a Mini. It looks like you are inside of a giant silo or something. The lava is especially amazing looking. It's glowing so bright it looks like it's going to burn through your screen.

     Many stages in Enigmo are impressive looking when you complete them. You often have long streams of droplets of several liquids bouncing crazily around a large stage. There are hundreds of droplets on screen, all flying through the air and eventually landing where they need to go. It looks like a giant Rube Goldberg machine that you created. A few days after I beat the game, I came back and completed one of the larger stages just to see the spectacle again.
     It seems like there is a limit to how many drops the game can draw. If liquid starts pooling up somewhere so that too many droplets are onscreen, the game will sometimes compensate by stopping or slowing the dripping of one of the liquids. Also, if you shoot liquid super high into the air, it sometimes will evaporate instead of coming back down. But, the game never has slowdown even when there are a ton of rapidly moving droplets, so I guess it's a tradeoff. It's annoying though when the stream you are working with starts to dry up so you can't clearly see how you are manipulating it.

     There is a bit of a bug where sometimes liquid will not interact with any objects in certain situations. This is often when it is bouncing off of a stationary part of the level in a strange way. This forces you to change what you are doing, which is annoying. This only happened to me in about 4 levels though, so not too bad. The game also annoyingly auto-saves at the end of every level, which freezes the screen. It says press cross to go to the next level, but you have to wait on the frozen screen for a bit before you can actually press cross, which is annoying. While I'm complaining, I'll also mention that at the beginning of each level there is a quick fly-by of the whole level that is un-skippable and totally useless. Also, it's a missed opportunity to not have the camera fly around the level on the z-axis at some point, like when you beat the level. That would be really cool, and the levels are already rendered in 3d, so why not? Also if you go to the level select menu, you can't go back to the main menu; you have to pick a level. Also, you pointlessly unlock levels as you go. Why? One more thing; if you beat the last level, you still get a prompt to press cross for the next level. If you press it, it starts level 50 over again.

     While you play, there is some subtle ambient music in the background. It's really good; sounds like a Mum song. Each droplet that hits an object makes a ticking sound. Just like real water dripping, this can be annoying in some levels, and there's no sound options, so you can't turn it down. Just like real life, it can also sound cool in some stages if the beat is right.

     Enigmo took me about 3 hours to beat. It kind of dragged in the middle, but learning all the concepts at the beginning and doing all of the more challenging (but still not that hard) stages at the end was fun. It needed more concepts and ideas to really be great, but it was enjoyable. It's a mediocre game, tier 1.

Galcon Labs Review

     I've played around a bit with Galcon Labs before I finally sat down to play the whole thing, and the concept seemed really cool to me. Each level is a field of planets. You control a few of the planets, which will be in your color. The enemy also controls some planets, represented in their color. These planets (those controlled by a either you or the enemy) have a number on them indicating how many ships are stationed there. This number goes up as more ships are produced on the planet. The bigger the planet is, the faster it produces ships. There are also many neutral planets, which are gray. They have a number indicating how many ships you need to send there to conquer them. The object is to wipe out all traces of your enemy before they do the same to you.

     The controls are as follows: the d-pad acts as a cursor that jumps from planet to planet. You can hold down circle to make the cursor only jump between enemy planets or cross to make it only select your planets (I never really used this). To attack, you need to select a planet or planets you control. You can chooses them one at a time by pressing R1 while they are highlighted, or select all planets you control with L1. There is no way to un-highlight a planet once it is picked except to attack. You then pick a neutral or enemy planet to attack. You put the cursor over it and press square to send 50% of the ships from your planet(s) or triangle to send 100%. As soon as you press the button, ships launch from all of your planets and head to their target. Once there, each of your ships takes out one of the ships docked at the planet, and vice versa. So you need to send more ships than the number on the planet in order to conquer it. Once a planet hits 0, it changes to your color and the rest of your ships dock there, filling it up with the number that land. Keep in mind that the enemy is doing this same process at the same time, and all non neutral planets are constantly going up in number. These matches only take a minute or two.

     The visuals in the games are pretty sparse. The planets all have irregular surfaces, which look like cratering, like the surface of the moon. The backgrounds are basic space stills; they look ok. The ships themselves are literally just triangles. This is actually pretty cool. It doesn't sound like much, but it all works pretty well visually, and there isn't any slowdown even when things get crazy.

     The first thing to do is the campaign, which quickly runs you through the different types of stages. There are Classic stages, which are just like I described previously. In Crash stages, opposing fleets can crash into and destroy one another while in transit. This is cool, but doesn't seem to have much effect on the winner or loser. The casualties just happen in space instead of at a planet. In Assassin matches there are two enemies. You need to take out a specific one to win. Your target wins if it takes out the other enemy, and that enemy is gunning for you. In Billiards matches, the planets are in motion and bounce off of one another. The final type of match is Stealth, where enemy fleets become invisible shortly after launching so that you can't see where they are going. After a few stages of campaign mode, enemy planet numbers all become an X, forcing you to estimate their strength. And then you are done. Campaign mode only took me about an hour. Most of the stages are too easy, although a handful of them were quite challenging.

     Next up is Fusion mode, where you choose a game type from the five I listed above and a difficulty. There are 10 difficulty levels, which is really weird. You then are thrown onto a random map. As in the later campaign stages, enemy forces are represented by an X, so you have to guess how many ships are at any given planet. Win or lose, you can chooses to restart the map you played or go on to a new map. You can also request a new map while the game is paused if you want to restart with a new layout. If you win, you get awarded points based on how fast you were, what difficulty you chose, and how hard the type of match you choose to play is. When you earn enough points, you gain different ranks. This mode is fun for a bit. I played about 2 hours of it, mainly playing Billiards and Assassin on the mid to high level difficulties. I even had a few victories on the highest difficulty, “Don't Try.” Assassin and Billiards are the most engaging battle types to me. Billiards shows you just how important positioning is. Attacking nearby planets is key as you waste time if your fleet is traveling across the entire screen. This is important in other modes, but is highlighted when the planets are all moving around. Assassin is really fun. Depending on the difficulty you are playing you need to try and let the enemy that isn't your target take some of your planets so that your target doesn't win or try to survive the 2^nd enemy aggressively attacking you.

     The music is really good. There are six songs by my count, one for the campaign and one for each type of Fusion match. They are all cool space electronic music. Very nice.

     This game is fun and interesting, but something's not right. If you're doing the math, you'll notice that I only played it for about 3 hours. I had some fun, but lost interest after that. Different maps do make each game a little different, but my main strategy of making all my planets attack the weakest large neutral planets and then attacking the closest large enemy planets soon became routine. In Assassin matches, all I would do is press L1 to highlight all my planets and then send all my ships after the closest target enemy planet. Some interesting things would happen and sometimes the plan would go wrong and need to be altered, but in general I stuck to that plan once I got used to things. I feel like a big part of the reason I developed these strategies is that picking single planets to attack is so time consuming as to be not worth doing. If you were controlling the game with a mouse or touch controls (there is an iOS version, I hear), this would be much simpler, but as it is, you can't win matches by slowing moving the cursor to one planet and then over to another and back again. This might work if the cursor would snap back to your planet after an attack, but even that would be super clunky. It's often necessary to quickly move the cursor to the target planet while pressing L1 to select all of your planets. This is because of the control scheme, not necessarily because it is the best strategy. The controls shouldn't dictate the way you strategize in this manner.

     I also want to complain about the way you get a bunch of options at the end of the each level, but can't actually pick them until the game auto-saves. You just sit there, wondering if the game has frozen as you foolishly press the button over and over.

     I also wish there was multiplayer. I feel like it would be amazing and strategies would develop that this game's AI could never utilize. Assassin would be so cool in multiplayer.

     The game is interesting enough that I might look into some other games that play like this, such as Mushroom Wars and Planets Under Attack. This game has some fun times. Probably about half of my brief time with it was pretty engaging. That's not much time though. That's why it's a mediocre game, tier 3.

BreakQuest Review (Minis)

     I just finished BreakQuest tonight, and I am ready to play its sequel, BreakQuest Extra Evolution, immediately. After playing Wizorb, I thought I was done with the breakout/ arkanoid genre (in case you don't know, these are those games where you bounce a ball off bricks at the top of the screen and then as the ball comes down, you bounce it back up to the bricks with a paddle. You want to break all the bricks without the ball getting past the paddle at the bottom of the screen). Wizorb was fun, but quite frustrating too. I now think that I may have been frustrated with Wizorb because it was trying to bring order and meaning to breakout mechanics, which are by nature random and uncontrollable. BreakQuest takes the total opposite approach by embracing and enhancing the breakout genre's inherent chaos.

     BreakQuest is a breakout style game with 100 levels. Each level is totally different. When you beat a level and move on to the next one, you never know what it's going to load up. Some levels have standard bricks arranged in patterns. Others have weird shapes that take many hits to break and bounce all over the screen when hit. Some of objects that need to be hit in order. Some have blocks that change colors and won't disappear until you match all of the blocks in a row. Some levels resemble other games, like Space Invaders,  complete with aliens that shoot at you, causing your ship to freeze up if they hit you. In my opinion, seeing what the next level is going to be is the main draw of this game. Just like I mentioned in my El Shaddai review, it's an amazing thing for a game to be so full of surprises that you never know what you're going to see and do in the next level.

     There are also a bunch of quirks and tweaks to the standard breakout gameplay. First off, you can press L1 to activate a strong gravitational pull on the ball. This is limited by a meter that refills for each new ball. This allows you to try to steer the ball into things below it. It's pretty ingenious as it gives you some control over the ball's flight path, but it is very inexact. I would use it every few stages to try and hit obstacles when the opportunity arose. It's hard, and succeeding feels like an accomplishment. This technique is so difficult and situations where you can use it come up so infrequently that it really adds to the chaos of the situation rather than make it more controllable (this is a compliment). It's not like you can steer the ball; that would be a design mistake. It's more like a semi-useful power-up that is always ready to go.

     Speaking of power-ups, there are a ton of them. Looking through the instruction book, I count 60. You read that right. Many of these are good. Many of these are bad. Some of them aren't really an advantage or a disadvantage, they just change things. There are good things, like barriers that catch the ball if you miss it and a power-up that launches 3 extra balls at once (and yes, this does stack if you get more than 1!). There are bad ones, like ones that make the ball's pattern erratic or mess with the controls of your ship. There are many types weapons that let your ship directly fire on the bricks and objects in the level, such as homing missiles and a spread gun. There are power-ups that change the shape of the ball and the bumper on your ship, or change the size of the bumper. And there are many, many others. The combination of 100 unique stages and 60 power-ups really made me feel like I ended up in some unique situations that no one else probably experienced, especially out of control scenarios with many, many balls on screen, some with their own orbiting ball enhancements! The addition of negative power-ups that need to be avoided is a great choice. Often you have to make the agonizing decision to fly through a bad power-up in order to save the ball. This hurts, and goes against your instincts, but losing a ball is a big deal, so you end up having to deal with these negative effects. Power-ups often end up interacting with objects in the level and getting knocked around by the ball, so that great item you're waiting for might keep getting juggled just out of reach, or a bad item might come flying at you as it gets knocked around.

     The d-pad or left analog stick lets you move your ship left and right. Holding square makes you go faster. Cross fires any weapon you might have equipped, and also re-launches the ball when you die and re-spawn. Triangle let's you launch your second ball (each life has two balls). Launching the reserve ball is typically too chaotic to control since juggling multiple balls is really hard (just like in real life), but is great for finishing off a final piece in a level, as you can try to line up your launch. The game also smartly spawns free weapon power-ups toward the end of levels to help you finish up the last few bricks or objects on the screen.

     The music is really cool. It's done by Maniacs of Noise, a group that works on sound effects and music for games and movies and stuff. The game's tunes are all a little different than typical video game music, but in a weird, good sort of way. Unfortunately there is a weird glitch (design choice?) that slowly turns the music down as you play until it disappears completely. Since you can't access the options screen to turn it back up during gameplay, I made many trips back to the main menu to turn it back up since it is really enjoyable. It's a very weird thing. I really want to know if it's a glitch or if they did it on purpose. Either way, it was really annoying to have to keep doing that when I was getting into a rhythm.

     Another little flaw (in my opinion) is the way the ball can sometimes slide down along your bumper and get past you even though you hit it. I feel like if you hit it, it should not get past you. This may be a design choice or a bit of a glitch, hard to tell. This happened to me quite a bit, although not enough to be a major issue.

     The graphics are really cool. Like many minis, there's a different look to it than your typical 2d HD game. And that's a very good thing. There are some really visually stunning effects, such as pieces that explode into confetti or bright colors when hit. Even when you smash many blocks at once and the screen fills with beautiful particles, there's no slow down (well, maybe I saw a hint of it once...)

     There's actually a little story to this game if you read through the digital instruction booklet (accessed on the XMB while you are playing the game). You are piloting a ship to try and shut down all tv signals because they are detrimental to humanity. Something like that. It's accompanied by several weird drawings, and I found it very amusing. Definetly some truth to the idea that tv is ruining humanity (a message given to you, ironically, through your tv). Even a few words and drawings like that can add a sense of purpose and coherency to an arcade style game like this as your imagination fills in the gaps of what you are experiencing.

     Once you beat all 100 levels, there is hard mode to try (actually you can pick easy, normal, or hard from the beginning), as well as arcade mode, which let's you pick from a list of game settings and play random levels. I never tried hard mode, as normal mode is pretty hard (I only ever got to 4th place on the high score table in normal mode), and playing the same levels over in order wouldn't have the magic of having something you've never seen before pop up in each new stage. I played with arcade mode for a few minutes after I beat the game. There are a few easier settings, and a few harder settings in this mode. There is Armageddon Mode, and Master Mode, which are both super hard in different ways. There is Fast! mode, my personal favorite, where the ball is super fast. You either beat the stage or die in an amazingly short time. I like the idea of having multiple modes that are hard in different ways. I'd like to see some other games in different genres have modes like that. Imagine an FPS or action game with difficulty modes like "Bad guys all have great guns but are slow," or "bad guys are super fast, but have normal guns." It's fun to see what random stage you get in arcade mode, but I what I really wanted was more new stages. That's why I'm going to play the sequel. I feel like I could play it right now, but I'll probably wait a bit.

     Despite how much I like Wizorb, my frustration with it made me think I would avoid breakout games from now on. After playing BreakQuest, my interest in the genre has been resurrected. I talked about it's limitations in my Wizorb review, but BreakQuest has show me that by embracing the chaos and randomness inherent in the genre, there is still a lot of fun and innovation to be had. I am now planning on playing BreakQuest Extra Evolution and Magic Ball. And if Wizorb 2 comes out, I'd be willing to give that a go too. I just hope its developers have learned a bit from playing BreakQuest. It's a great game, tier 2.

Why Playstation Plus Isn't For Everyone (But is Still a Great Deal)

     My one year Playstation Plus subscription (which I got free for signing up for a credit card) is coming to an end in just a few short days, and I am not going to renew it. You may have heard that it is an amazing deal and well worth the money, and it is for many people. It just isn't for me at the moment, and I'd like to explain why.

     Playstation Plus is a great deal that gives you a huge return on your investment.. If you bid on codes on ebay, you can get a year's subscription for about $40 -$45, and you get games worth many times that amount of money. But my main concern is the amount of time I have to play games. You may have noticed that I'm making a list of all the PS3 games I want to play before getting a PS4. This list is going to be pretty comprehensive when it is finished. In order for Plus to be worth it to me, there has to be at least $40 worth of games in the instant game collection that I will play that year. The time constraint of one year might not seem like a big deal, but think of it this way. You need to play $40 worth of games every year from your IGC, or you aren't getting your money's worth. The hundreds of dollars of games you “get” on Plus don't have any value unless you play them. Of course, you also need to consider the amount of money saved by buying things on Plus sales. This is a little deceptive, as games that are on Plus sales are usually on sale for normal people too, so you should count the amount of money between the Plus price and the sale price, not the Plus price and the normal price. So really, you need a little less than $40 worth of games in the IGC if you count the money you save buying things on sale.

     At the moment, there doesn't seem to be enough harmony between the bucket list and the IGC to justify purchasing another year of Plus. All those free games are great, but free games are worthless if you aren't going to play them. And then the idea that you need to play $40 worth in a year adds a pressure to the situation that I'm not comfortable with. I want to play the games I want to play when I want to play them and in the order I want to play them, not worry about playing what is free so that I make up enough value to justify my subscription, especially since my free time is very limited at the moment.

     There is the phenomenon of finding hidden gems you weren't going to play and didn't even know about. I played Closure and Anomaly just because they were on Plus, and I love those games. But with my new list, it's getting harder to justify trying just any random game when I have a written out backlog a mile long and I've already passed on the game when choosing my bucket list. I literally looked at every game on PSN, so there aren't any games I haven't heard of. It's possible there's some game out there that I passed on in my bucket list review that I would love if I tried it on Plus, but I'm giving everything a thorough review, which makes that less likely. The fact that we're nearing the end of the PS3's life cycle and I'm making this list is a big part of why I'm not renewing. I looked at all the games and am picking what I want to play. There won't be many more PS3 games. In the middle of a generation (say, the PS4 in a few years), Plus is a great way to try out random stuff it throws your way. Here at the end of the generation with my definitive backlog almost complete, it makes less sense to me.

     In conclusion, I think my $40 is probably better spent buying the games I know I want rather than subscribing to Plus again. This could change, of course, if a lot of games on my list end up on Plus and it's obvious that I'll play $40 worth of them in a year. I'll have to evaluate it as the list becomes more final and the instant game collection gets bigger. I'll also have to do the math and consider buying a temporary Plus subscription from time to time when there are big sales, as some of the Plus discounts are really big. A temporary subscription could pay for itself during a big sale. Playstation Plus is a great value for your money, but remember that you have to play those free games (within a year!) in order to actually get your money's worth.

P.S. Here is a peak of how the definitive PS3 Bucket List is coming along. These games have made the cut. I have hundreds more to look through at this point though!

Flow – beautiful non game

Genesis Collection*

Enigmo *

Galcon Labs*

Retro/Grade*

Wild Arms*

Everyday shooter*

plants vs. zombies*

last of us

walking dead*

Pixel Junk MonstersPS3 version – tower defense

BreakQuest 2

Ico and Shadow HD*

Grubbins on Ice

lone survivor – 2d pixel horror

Siren: blood curse – 8.9 gigs, get European version?

Costume Quest Review (PS3)

     A few months ago I was playing with a long bubble wand with my niece, and thinking about bubble swords, and I decided I would play Costume Quest close to Halloween. I was hoping to recapture some of the magic feeling of Halloween night, dressed up in a costume all night pretending you're on an adventure in the dark. And I got that feeling right away since the first costume you get is a cardboard box robot, which I am proud to say I once trick-or-treated in.

     Costume Quest is a tiny little turn-based RPG, a format I wasn't sure would work too well. I was surprised to learn that you can have a great story and interesting character progression in a small package that only takes a few hours to play (I would estimate about 5 to beat it and get all the trophies).

     The story involves Halloween night in a new town for twins Wren and Reynold. You choose one to be your avatar, and then head out into the night. Monsters kidnap the twin you aren't playing as, and you soon recruit a few new friends to try and locate your missing sibling and stop the monsters' nefarious plan to steal candy. Fortunately, you find that when you engage a monster in a fight, you become a real-life version of your costume. You also become Kaiju sized, as do your opponents. That part is strange, but works quite well, especially since a lot of the costumes are of big things (giant robot, Statue of Liberty, french-fries....).

     The graphics are colorful and cell-shaded. The human character design is quite reminiscent of Animal Crossing. The children you see out and about are all in various costumes that are all simple and look great. Adults are often comically obese or crazy-skinny, so the whole thing has a pretty cartoony vibe to it. The environments look fairly good. You'd think they'd run out of settings that worked for Halloween, but your 3 levels are the suburbs, a mall that is holding Halloween events and store-by-store trick-or-treating, and a Halloween carnival. A handful of the graphical assets are not as high-fi or well designed as they could be, but by and large everything looks good.

     The first thing you might notice about the sound in Costume Quest is that there is no voice acting (beyond a few grunts and such from monsters here and there) despite the fact that there is a ton of dialogue. This was off-putting...for about five seconds. Then I got so caught up in the clever writing and the flow of the way the text pops in and out during conversations that I totally dropped this complaint. In fact, I think this is one example of a game that is better without voice acting. The sound effects are good for the most part, but maybe a little lacking. The music is good, with happy-go-lucky spooky music throughout including wavering organ sounds and Nightmare Before Christmas-ish tunes.

     As you go around the levels, you use the left-stick to control your character. The other members of your party (up to 2 other characters) follow behind you. There is no camera control, but it's not needed. Unfortunately, your character can get stuck on stuff and stop moving, which seems like an unnecessary glitch. I feel like you should just slide past stuff, not get caught on it. Cross makes you talk to npc's. Square makes you swing your candy bucket. You can use this to hit a million different types of inanimate objects to make candy (the game's currency) come flying out. Part of the way into the game I discovered that hitting npc's makes them each say something unique and funny. There are a lot of kids and adults out and about, and I started hitting them all once I discovered this. Circle activates your costume's field ability. Only a few of them have these abilities, and in general they are only used in a few places to access specific areas. For example, the space warrior costume's light saber can light up dark areas that are too spooky to go through otherwise, and the knight's shield can block falling stuff (such as waterfalls) that block your way. The real useful one is the robot's roller skates, which let you skate around quickly. It gives you a very cool kids-wearing-heeleys-at-the-mall vibe and is super useful for getting around. It's unfortunate that if you want your lead character to wear other costumes, you often will want to switch back to the robot when you're not in battle just to use the skates.

     R2 let's you switch costumes quickly using an equip wheel. This works well for your main character, but get's a little tricky when you are trying to switch out multiple characters as each one has their own screen you toggle between. It would have been easier to have a costume select screen where a costume can be equipped to a character with the press of a unique button for each character. This is how battle stamps (abilities and stat boosts) are equipped, so it's strange that costumes don't function the same way. Triangle brings up your journal where you can equip battle stamps, look at your quests, look at collectibles, and check your stats.

     The game has three levels, and in each you must trick-or-treat at all the houses/stores/carnival tents to continue to the next. When you knock on a door, a grown-up might answer and give you candy, or you might interrupt a monster who is robbing the house's candy and get into a fight. This leads to some real tension when you knock on a door and the drum roll plays.

     In battle, your side always goes first. Each costume has a regular attack and a special ability that charges up and can be used on every 3^rd turn. Some battle stamps give you an alternate attack. All of these options pop up in front of you when it's your turn. You pick one with the press of a button, and it happens to whichever enemy you have highlighted (you select this with the arrows). Normal attacks all require some kind of input to maximize damage, such as tapping a button rapidly, hitting a button at the correct time on a moving timeline, or simply pressing a button as it is prompted on screen. You'll do damage if you ignore or fail at this, but not as much. The button you have to press is random, so that keeps you on your toes. You similarly can block some of the damage of enemy attacks by pressing a specific random button when prompted. Special attacks all have different effects, such as damaging all enemies, healing the party, giving buffs and de-buffs, and other cool stuff. It's a shame special attacks don't require different types of inputs, that would be fun. As it is, you just watch them go off like a normal turn-based RPG. Battle stamp abilities usually do some kind of status effect. Battle stamps are acquired from a shop where you pay candy, which you get from trick-or-treating and from battles and side quests. Battles are pretty easy in general, although I had characters die a handful of times, and even lost a few battles. Once I got through the first area however, this became pretty rare as I really got to know how the battles work, although I still lost a character here and there and had some close calls. Losing means nothing in this game, you end up right where you were, but the house you were at hasn't been trick-or-treated or the enemy you engaged hasn't been defeated. You also never have to heal outside of battle, everyone gets full health at the start of each fight, which greatly streamlines the whole game flow.

     Battles stay interesting even when you get really good at the system as you have a constant flow of new battle stamps and new costumes at your disposal. Each character can equip one costume and one battle stamp, which leads to an interesting amount of customization. Although it would be even more customizable and interesting if you could equip more than one battle stamp or if it mattered which character wore which costume. I would love it if the difficulty were cranked up a bit but you could equip 2 or 3 battle stamps as I saw some cool synergies sitting there un-utilized because you can only equip one. Still, you can find some interesting combinations. I experimented with multiple types of builds that all worked well in battle and were fun, so I stayed interested the whole time. It's bad design that in order to see a costume's effect on your stats, you need to equip it on one screen and then switch to the stats screen. You also read about it's abilities on a third screen, so that's pretty annoying and would have been easily fixed by putting it all in one place.

     There is a battle-heavy segment or two in the game that starts to drag, but they pass. Enemies also keep things interesting as you encounter new species and classes of bad guys, and a handful of bosses that do interesting stuff that you need to try and counteract. I also forgot to mention how cool it is to see the shabby, home-made costumes transform into huge, awesome versions of the themselves during each battle. Seeing each new transformation and new attacks makes you eager to find new costumes and see what's next. I especially like the Statue of Liberty's patriotic healing spell.

     There are a few other things to do besides trick-or-treating and fighting. Side quests such as finding kids who are playing hide and seek and bobbing for apples are fun diversions and net you extra candy. There are creepy treats cards to collect and trade for, although you will probably get them all just from playing normally. These are trading cards in the vein of Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages: disgusting and funny puns and gags involving candy. Just like Garbage Pail Kids, these range from delightfully corny to downright disturbing. These are really well done and great fun to look at, although I really wish you could zoom in and look at them full size instead of as thumbnails in your journal. Also if you get multiples of them, a number appears in the corner to indicate how many you have, but blocks part of the art. Regardless I really enjoyed this part of the game; it's really kickstarted my interested in the real-life counterparts to these cards, and really adds to the theme of kids doing stuff, since kids love that kind of thing in real life (at least I did, and still do).

     As I briefly mentioned, the dialogue in this game is really good and clever. Everyone has a few interesting things to say, some of which might make you chuckle out loud. I suspect that the great writing is the glue that holds this whole experience together. From the weird things kids say to the clueless adults and funny references to other media, a lot of my delight in this game came from eagerness to see what the next npc would say. And there are tons of npc's.

      Costume Quest is short and sweet and scratched my longing-for-childhood-at-Halloween-time itch pretty darn good. It's got a few flaws, but is greatly supported by the way it's cleverly written text dialogue steadily pops up and flows on your screen, offering constant clever comments in between your mostly fun battles with lightly customized characters in a cool Halloween setting. It's a great game, tier 3.

PS3 Bucket List, pt.1

     PS4 is coming soon, but I am cheap and I don't play on buying one until there is a price drop or two. In the meantime, I will be playing PS3 a lot. So I just went through the PSN store to look at all the games and to try and pick out what I will be playing while I wait. I came up with 507 games (out of the 2,526 games available, which counts PSP and PSVita games (although this list is only for PS3)). There are some repeats, and sometimes I just put a franchise name rather than all the games. The reason there are so many is that I want to give each game a fair chance, and many, many games on PSN have virtually no information about them. I will need to google these titles. So I need to narrow this down to about 1-3 years worth of games, probably 50 to 100. No easy task, but it is super fun to go through all these games for me. I will start sorting through the list and post when I am finished paring it down. But here is the raw list of 507 possible candidates (sorry that it floods the blog and makes everything else unreadable, please let me know if there is anything I should consider that isn't on the list!):

Gripshift

Flow

Pixel Junk Monsters – version?

Bionic commando – DRM? Or capcom classics for original

flower

noby noby boy

astro tripper

gunstar heroes

alien havoc

abe's exoddus

braid

hysteria project

rocket knight

coconut dodge

mecho wars

costume quest

spelunker hd

whos that flying

blimp

flying hamster

strong bad

plants vs. zombies

wackylands boss

star hammer tactics

2d adventures octopus

limbo

1000 tiny claws

okabu

rocket birds

driver teleport

sine mora

bioshock

last of us

Medievil

Jumping Flash

Wipeout

Super Stardust HD

echochrome

Siren: blood curse

Pixel Junk Eden

the last guy

burnout

suikoden

soldner x

lumines

magic orbs

galactrix

legacy of kain

field runners

trine

pixel junk shooter

stand o food

age of zombies

greed corp

aero racer

normal tanks

Megaman 9 and 10

dead space

soldner x2

cubixx

beam em up

history egypt

widget's odyssey

fly fu

young thor

castle crashers

ace armstrong

lara croft guardian -single player

alundra

age of hammer wars

crescent pale mist

linger in shadows

Toy Home

Fatal inertia

Wolf of the battlefield

burn zombie burn

flock

droplitz

namco museum xevious

shatter

silent hill

state shift

brain pipe

capcom classics

funky punch

um jammer lammy

critter crunch

detuned

mushroom wars

vempire

yummy yummy cooking jam

zombie tycoon

numblast

red alert

circles

d cube planet

soul reaver

kahoots

matt hazard

heracles racing

battle fantasia

vandal hearts

deflector

Hi-octane

Thexder neo

fret nice

populous

spaceball

magic carpet

retro cave flyer

digitiles

earthshield

vector td

sam and max

Section 8

sheep defense

tonzurrako

charge tank squad

Monkey island

carjack streets

12 boat racing

ramen heaven

sneezies

love cupid

supermarket mania

pile up bakery

super stacker

voodoo dice

yeti sports

influence

pallurikio

hello flowers

chameleon

deathspank

archibald's adventures

ys

shank

theme hospital

carnivores dinosaur hunter

red faction

terrover

caterpillar

cuboid

panda craze

blade kitten

cho aniki

alien breed

apache overkill

fort commander

urbanix

arc the lad

zenonia

aqua panic

endwar

mercury

motor storm

rocket men

fort commander

prince of persia?

qlione

auditorium

jelly car

sky fighter

beat sketcher

dragon's lair

pacman dx

daezemon

dead nation

funky lab rat

blimp

comet crash

I must run

arcade essentials

borderlands

a space shooter

eat them

forest puzzle

nova

magician lord

microbot

faery

spare parts

gattling gears

greed corp

tales from space

undergarden

harvest moon

romance

explodemon

stacking

acceleration of suguri

back to the future

core blaster

saiyuki

bloons

denki

paper wars

space ace

twin blades

xenogears

pixeljunk shooter

pixeljunk sidescroller

pix'n love

ancient game treasures

hard corps

moon diver

slam bolt

battle los angeles

legend of mana

mini squadron

premier manager

swarm

chimes

rushn attack

pow

split second

duael invaders

red faction

stardrone

3d twist and match

dungeon hunter

mad blocker

neutopia

puzzle agent

fancy pants

threads of fate

red johnson

star raiders

under siege

alien crush

bonk's adventure

sky force

graw

labyrinth

puzzle dimension

armageddon riders

dungeon explorer

victory run

new adventure island

zombie racers

akimi village

run ghost run

me monstar

ninjamurai

galaga

scarygirl

one epic game

snowy

impossible game

cyberbots

mercury

crysis

renegade ops

cubixx hd

edge

harmony of despair

revoltin youth

eufloria

dead space

speedball

sideway

beat hazard

real steel

homefront

festival of blood

pixel junk sidescroller

Worms – golf?

call of duty

burger time

jurassic park

red dead

dragon age

call of juarez

alice

motor storm

pow

all zombies must die

klonoa

stickman rescue

kane and lynch

mini ninjas

puddle

super stardust

burnout

primal

monochrome racing

journey

warp

shoot many robots

idiot squad

pinball

dead rising

battlefield

angry birds

jetpack joyride

future cop

I am alive

world gone sour

walking dead

red faction

floating cloud go

cursed crusade

awesomenauts

datura

linger in shadows

fortixx

Prototype 2

rock of ages

batman

kaleidescope

2 worlds

sonic generations

dyad

war of the monsters

papo and you

sound shapes

shinobi

deep black

transformers

psychonauts

feisty feet

machinarium

sunflowers

nobunaga

orange box

pid

planets under attach

jetpack joyride

sine mora

black and white shift

rotastic

black knight sword

kareteka

labyrinth legends

3d dot heroes

munch's odyssey

demon's souls

angry birds

siren ps2

gunslinger

escape vector

the cave

sonic racing

germinator

when vikings attack

first queen iv

heavy fire

quantum theory

army of two

machinarium

hogs of war

amen

defiance

x com

ion assault

anarchy reigns

evergreen adventure

fatal frame

guacamelee

dragon fantasy

sacred citadel

sniper ghost

blazing angels

God Mode

Thomas was alone

deadly premonition

zombie tycoon

call of juarez gunslinger

manhunt

metro

rune factory/ harvest moon

tiny token

devil may cry

max payne

ratchet deadlocked

fuse

grid

mountain crime

the warriors

Earth defense force

limbo

matt hazard

contra

pirates

ragnarok odyssey

giana sisters

storm

binary domain

bladestorm

castle shikigmai

dynasty tactics

nobunaga

legends of war patton

alien spidy

time and eternity

do not fall

stealth inc

zoe hd

cloudberry

zeno clash

shift extended

narco terror

ibb and obb

red star

duck tales

the buruea

splinter cell

air conflicts

crimson sea

lost planet

port royale

brothers

castle of illusion

chaos code

diablo

kickbeat

rayman legends

carnivores hd

mystic heroes

pupeteer

sanctum

lone survivor

mark of kri

flashback

magrunner

pac man

rain

sky div

battle of tiles

heavenly guarding

orc attack

assassains creed

3d dot heroes

Afrika

aliens vs predator

ar tonelico

bionic commando

blacklight

Area 52

brink

brutal legend

captain america

jericho

condemned

conflict

cross edge

dark void

dead to rights

dirt

doki doki

driver teleport

dungeon siege

DW gundam

enslaved

fairytail fights

fallout

fear

front mission

genji

golden axe

hail to the chimp

haze

hunted

il sturmovik

inversion

kung fu rider

lair

legendary

mercenaries

majin

nail'd

naughty bear

mindjack

neverdead

operation flashpoint

overlord

planetside

Prey 2 r

rage

resistance

resonance of fate

risen

rogue warrior

ruse

sengoku

shinobi

civilization

singularity

skate

splatterhouse

splice

star wars

stick it to

stormrise

stranglehold

syndicate

riddick

saboteur

timeshift

trinity universe

tron

unreal

viewtiful joe

wet

white knight

yakuza

ys